Italian Politics at a Crossroads?

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There is a tradition in American journalism that makes it
very hard to take Italian politics seriously. Even when themes of ethnic
contempt are decently hidden, the comic motifs remain. Metaphors of operatic
postures, political deals as tangled as spaghetti, and the public's sunny
indifference make the Fascism of Mussolini, the nearly fifty years of
the Italian republic, and the current government all sound much alike—always
unstable and corrupt. Miraculously, this impression is sustained by its
own erroneousness. Proven dangerously wrong by Fascism's contribution
to world war, by a Communist party that terrified many a cold warrior
and influenced the left throughout Europe, by a nearly unequaled economic
miracle, and by fifty years of remarkable democratic stability since 1946,
the familiar images work as well as ever. Predictions disproved became
evidence that Italy was volatile. Disasters that did not occur—like traffic
less lethal than it looks, free flowing wine with little drunkenness,
seductive men who prove harmless by the second date, or Venice forever
sinking and still gorgeous—merely demonstrated that sober Anglo-Saxons
misinterpret Italian frivolity. Against all this, those who use English
and are informed about Italian affairs have for a generation had to insist
over and over that Italy is a prosperous modern nation, that Italians
care a lot about politics, and that each cabinet change is not really
a "crisis" of the system. Now it is doubly hard to make the
point that the current crisis is real, that its outcome matters, and that
we have reason to be concerned.

To understand the current political situation, two general
points about Italy since World War II need to be kept in mind. Each runs
counter to impressions that remain widespread, even while leaving room
for some familiar clichés. Italy has enjoyed fifty years of economic
growth, at a rate no other industrial nation can match for so long a period.
In that time the Italian Republic was marked by a political stability
so firm that it might better be called rigidity.

Such economic growth was necessarily accompanied by great
social change and dislocation. The taste and social graces for which Italian
culture is renowned provide no immunity to vulgarity and ostentation,
and every excess associated with the nouveau riche elsewhere, including
the United States in the 198Os, has its exuberant Italian versions visible
in villas, Lamborghinis, cellular phones, and corruption. The differences
between North and South, an important strain in Italian life since unification,
remain. The South has prospered, too (and its per capita income is well
above that of Portugal, Ireland, or the poorer districts of England),
but much of its economy depends on government subventions and social payments.
For more than a generation southerners have moved away in search of work,
primarily to Northern Italy, where they have tended to congregate in crowded
urban districts, whose crime-ridden denizens are easily victimized by
prejudice that labels them ignorant and slovenly. Italy's economic life
has been more unusual, however, in the extensive role its government has
played. Through government-run holding companies (a Fascist legacy), the
state has directly controlled a larger part of the total economy in Italy
than in any other non-communist society.

Political stability throughout the Republic's history was
the result of a multi-party political system dominated by the Christian
Democrats who sat in every government, usually held a majority of the
cabinet posts, and more often than not had the prime ministership. Adjustments
to subtle shifts in thin parliamentary majorities were accommodated by
frequent changes of government, but stability followed from continuity
in the makeup of cabinets, in which many of the same figures served year
after year. Thus while most governments lasted less than a year, the same
people served over and over as ministers (for any given period, Italy
has had, for example, fewer ministers of foreign affairs than the United
States has had Secretaries of State).

Weak governments and a long-lived political class increased
the importance of the power of an expanding bureaucracy and the autonomous
power of political parties. Smaller parties especially benefitted from
the need for delicately balancing slim majorities, which followed from
the practice of excluding the second largest party, the Italian Communist
Party, from all governments. Each party had its constituency, and its
popular vote rarely varied by more than a few percentage points from election
to election. The parties got along with each other (and here the practice
included the Communists) by dividing up government posts and expenditures
for services, by allocating appointments to and contracts let by government-dominated
industries, and by extending their influence into university appointments
and the entertainment industry. Thus businesses carefully divided their
accounts among publications and advertising agencies associated with the
Christian Democrats, the Communists, and the Socialists; and entertainers,
by joining one of the major parties, assured their access to a particular
set of concert halls across the nation.

In this system, elections were exciting, expensive affairs,
marked more by great rallies and brilliant posters than real debates,
that culminated in extraordinarily high voter turnout. Parties, more than
candidates, were the issue, and policies were presented in general, indeed
delphic, terms wrapped in skillful rhetoric that indicated attitudes and
direction with few specific commitments. Parliamentary discussions were
vigorous, often of high quality, sensitive to public opinion, and even
influential; but decision-making and the continuous negotiations among
parties (and within their many factions) took place largely behind closed
doors. This was a system that worked by rewarding subtle maneuver and
complicated compromise. If it favored postponing difficult issues, it
could often regroup to deal with them effectively; but it was a system
no one could love and few were willing to defend. Policies and relative
party strengths did glacially reflect social change, and the rumors of
private deals and corruption may have been more imagined than actual behavior.

To succeed in this system, parties needed some able leaders
(and there were many), but most of all they needed vast organizations
to sustain local branches that maintained an enormous array of social
activities and publications aimed at every segment of society. All this
required elaborately maintained networks of direct and indirect patronage
and, above all, money. At the peak of the Cold War, the Christian Democrats
benefitted from funds from the United States and from its connections
to the Catholic Church in addition to more public sources, and the Communists
relied on significant subsidies from the Soviet Union. The electoral rivalry
of these parties of skillful propagandists was for forty years the backbone
of electoral politics. Gradually the Socialists and to a lesser extent
smaller parties, got into the game. With glasnost, however, the sources
of declining foreign support dried up; and parties turned more and more
to other devices. In a booming economy, parties could use their patronage
and their power to influence licenses and contracts in exchange for sizable
contributions from large enterprises, foreign and domestic. Such gifts
were prohibited by law, however (there was some truth to the comment that
the difference between political bribery in Italy and in the United States
was that in Italy it was illegal). As vast sums flowed into secret party
coffers, a growing portion stuck to the hands of the party leaders who
arranged for them.

This was the political system—one of weak governments that
sustained the status quo in which a high degree of participation and public
awareness produced only limited response—that was suddenly swept away
in the aftermath of the fall of communism. Italy, with the largest communist
party outside the communist sphere, experienced the greatest political
collapse of any non-communist country. For some time it looked, however,
as if Italian politics would once again meet a looming crisis in the nick
of time. The old system had clearly been eroding, and pressures for change
were rising. The modernizing economy had become intolerant of the inefficient,
sluggish, and self-interested bureaucracy. Entrepreneurs were increasingly,
and the newly rich noisily, restive over high taxes. New waves of immigrants
from Africa triggered resentments and fears that fed intolerance, including
incidents of racist violence from small neo-fascist gangs. An economic
downturn (during much of which Italy's slow growth rate remained higher
than that of any European country) coupled with restructuring to create
rising unemployment and increased demands for action of just the sort
governments found most difficult.

Then independent magistrates, almost by accident, began
uncovering the widespread practice of graft, undermining the feeble legitimacy
of the entire regime as the judicial discoveries extended from industry
to industry and nearly every party, although the Christian Democrats and
Socialists remained the most heavily implicated. Significantly, the public
response was one of civic outrage, and the demand for reform became irresistible.
Characteristically, Italian politics did attempt a kind of house cleaning.
An interim government began to tackle the budget deficits that decades
of growth had tolerated, and a new electoral system designed to favor
single-member constituencies was overwhelmingly approved in a referendum.
The new law was intended to favor local candidates rather than parties,
to weaken the national stranglehold of parties, and to guarantee strong
and stable majorities. Firmer measures against corruption and against
mafia violence were supported on all sides. The Communist party, which
decades before had in effect become a social democratic party critical
of eastern European communism, seemed poised to benefit from its record
of probity. With some pain, it even abandoned the communist label to become
the Party of the Democratic Left (PDS). Without communism to oppose, the
Christian Democrats lost the raison d'etre that had held together a broad
coalition of interests ranging from progressive to reactionary; and it,
too, reformed and changed its name. Italy had apparently established the
basis for a more responsive democracy.

Elections this spring were intended, and expected, in effect
to certify this transformation and propel it into new and lasting political
forms. Opinion polls showed clearly that the majority of Italians were
centrists and that the left was strong. Instead, three new elements, taking
advantage of the public mood, led to a more uncertain result. First, like
eastern European countries holding their first free elections, Italians
faced ballots in which there were almost no familiar parties. The Communist
party was gone, its members divided between the PDS and a smaller, militant
wing loyal to the old symbols. The Christian Democrats were gone, replaced
by three heirs with vaguely differing programs; and there were parties
that focused on opposition to the mafia, on environmental issues, and
general reform. The electoral system would exact a high price for such
multiple parties, as it was designed to do, but it had not yet discouraged
them from trying to gain a place in the political arena.

Second, other new parties proved far more dynamic and inventive.
This was a political campaign unlike any other Italy had ever seen, although
Americans would have found its worst aspects familiar. The Northern League
had grown in support over the last decade on a program that denounced
the government in Rome as southern, inefficient and corrupt. Its dynamism
came, however, from the daring of its erratic leader, Umberto Bossi, who
had made a career of saying out loud things that it had not been respectable
to say. He denounced welfare expenditures and subsidies to the South and
(inaccurately) claimed that the North paid proportionally more in taxes
and received less. More important, he did this with unpredictable turns
that captured headlines and with an often witty and direct speech that
played to covert prejudice and that was deliciously unprecedented in the
courtly rhetoric of Italian politics. In addition, the neo-Fascists took
on new life. A small party isolated on the fringe of public life, they
had relied on muffled appeal to an aging nostalgia for the old regime
to win support that was always less than seven percent of the vote. Their
new leader, Gianfranco Fini, presented a different image, for he looks
like a well-dressed businessman and sounds like a responsible reformer
(except for moments of candid praise for Mussolini as a great statesman
and affectionate gestures toward skinheads). Most important of all was
the sudden candidacy of Silvio Berlusconi, a familiar media billionaire
and one of the most personable of Italy's extremely wealthy self-made
men. His movement, carefully not called a party, was named after the Forza
Italia slogan of the national soccer team (many of whose stars play for
the Milan team that Berlusconi owns-along with the principal private television
networks, several influential newspapers, and a major publishing house,
among other interests). Presenting himself as the very symbol of change,
Berlusconi mounted an American-style, media-savvy campaign, recruiting
grassroots supporters (often small businessmen and professional people)
in every city and town. While the PDS bravely and dully spoke of the need
for cutting expenditures and raising taxes, Berlusconi promised prosperity
and reduced taxes, talked of a government of experts devoid of politicians,
and warned against the dangers of renascent communism.

Third, the electoral system proved a decisive change. It
allotted two-thirds of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies to candidates
with the most votes on the first ballot, however far they were from a
majority, The votes cast would have produced a parliament very different
from its predecessor, even under the old system. In this parliament, however,
the overwhelming majority of the new deputies have never before sat in
a representative body. Whereas in the past, the Italian Chamber almost
exactly reflected the votes won by each party, even the smallest, the
new Chamber only loosely reflects aggregate votes. Forza Italia, the neo-Fascists,
and the Northern League, with some minor allies, command a firm majority
in the Chamber. The electorate was less decisive. Berlusconi's Forza Italia
won just 21 percent of the votes (slightly more than Ross Perot in the
United States); the neo-Fascists won 13.4 percent (the biggest single
surprise of the election), and the Northern League more than 8.4 per cent.
On the other side, the PDS held onto 20.4 percent of the votes, a good
showing although their rather tired and old-fashioned campaign had failed
to win much new support. The additional disappointment for the left was
that all the other parties on the left garnered only 9 percent. The three
parties of the center won 17.5 percent, but the largest of them, the Popular
Party which is the direct descendant of the Christian Democrats, had only
11 percent. The political transformation, then, rests here: with the weakness
of the old center and old non-communist left and on the strength of three
new parties that have formed the government. Great as it was, the change
in voter patterns was not so great as the change in government it brought
about.

Berlusconi proceeded with remarkable skill and clear-eyed
cynicism to form a majority with the Northern League and the neo-Fascists.
Despite constant carping, they have held together, the neo-Fascists grateful
for their sudden rise to respectability, the Northern League afraid to
risk another election after the disappointing results of this one. So
far, the government has not tackled any of the serious problems Italy
faces. Berlusconi has instead concentrated on consolidating power, moving
most decisively to gain control of the secret services and the state-owned
television and radio networks. Several times, his majority has threatened
to fall apart, most dramatically when he issued a decree restricting the
independent power of the magistrates investigating corruption. Their heavy
use of preventive detention has kept the investigations unfolding. When
arrested and imprisoned, corporate officers and politicians have chosen
to talk to win their release, revealing how much they had paid in bribes
and to whom. The device does, as Berlusconi suddenly noticed, raise real
issues of civil rights; and the timing of some of the arrests suggests
a troubling awareness of their political effect. Berlusconi, however,
was not convincingly cast as a defender of civil liberties, especially
as it became known that his brother, a major officer in Berlusconi's holding
company, was the next to be called in. The Prime Minister was forced to
back down (with his partners joining the opposition in denouncing his
measure), and his brother has since confessed that their company kept
a huge slush fund for bribing officials.

That is where things stand during the August recess. The
coalition remains together, its frequent announcements to that effect
a reminder of its fragility. The imminent need to address substantive
issues will strain it even further. Still, Berlusconi has shown considerable
skill, and he may hold on to his majority. If the government falters,
more drastic and dangerous steps are easy to imagine. The more likely
outcome would be another set of elections. Although the government parties
would be likely to lose significant support, the left does not yet show
signs of the leadership or program to do more than make marginal gains.
Thus the outcome would depend very much on the emergence of a stronger
center to take part of the place long held by the Christian Democrats.
These parties of the center could tip the balance toward a center-left
coalition or, less likely, support a restructuring of Berlusconi's coalition.
Either choice might lead to the kind of essentially two-party system the
electoral reforms envisioned; yet all that depends on the grace with which
some or all the members of the current coalition would abandon office.

Right now, Italian politics really are volatile, and there
is a crisis. The last time the Italian political system had to deal with
the collapse of the established party system and the upheaval accompanying
new mass parties (then the Socialists and the Catholics), at the end of
World War I, Italy invented Fascism, which proved to have wide appeal
from Portugal, Spain, and Belgium, to Hungary and Romania. That history
need not repeat. The more immediate danger lies in the disillusionment
with democracy itself and with the possibility of meaningful reform. That
is now an added burden for all Italian politicians on top of the economic
and social issues still to be faced. Whatever the Fascists stand for,
it is not democracy and pluralism, and the fact remains that they now
share power in one of the world's richest nations. Newer and poorer democracies
are certainly watching, and everyone else has reason to.

Americans, too, can find much to ponder in a political process
that allows sound bites and media slogans to drown out most serious political
discussion; in which party discipline and ideological coherence are easily
lost despite a long tradition; in which resentment of budget deficits
and taxes and distrust of government is mobilized by mean-spirited rhetoric
against poorer regions, minorities, and foreigners; and in which a wealthy
maverick can use his fortune and media skills to run against the establishment
while in fact remaining well connected to it. Italian politics today have
a significance that extends beyond its borders or those of the European
Union. Whether we watch gloomily or with hope, we would do well to break
with tradition and take current events in Italy seriously, even from across
the ocean.